Bundesletter Book Club #4

The media I consumed in February/March to further my understanding of the German game

Building the Yellow Wall by Uli Hesse

The past few months, I’ve had a crash course in ‘Black and Yellow’. In December, I visited the Westfalendstadion to cover Borussia Dortmund’s Christmas carol service. A few weeks ago, I made an undercover trip to the Yellow Wall, watching my beloved Union Berlin get unceremoniously turned over by BVB to the tune of six goals.

What I found was a club that is everything it purports to be. It’s quite staggering to visit a stadium of 82,000 and still feel you are part of a community. Similar trips to large stadiums in the UK have left me feeling cold. The Emirates could never make as much noise. Tottenham Hotspur stadium, for all its obvious merits, lacks the urgency and intimacy of the old White Hart Lane that is still there in abundance at Signal Iduna Park. The only thing Old Trafford and this mecca of German football have in common is a leaky roof.

The modern idea of Dortmund is one of success. Since the success of Jurgen Klopp’s all-conquering team of the early 2010s, BVB is seen as the only real competition to the juggernaut in Bavaria. This is probably the only confection that surrounds Dortmund as a ‘brand’.